About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

Topics can be refined further in the search results. The Topic facet will reveal the high-level topics associated with the articles returned in the search results.

Abstract

We propose a scheme for two-dimensional (2D) atom localization based on the controlled spontaneous emission, in which the atom interacts with two orthogonal standing-wave fields. Due to the spatially dependent atom-field interaction, the position probability distribution of the atom can be directly determined by measuring the resulting spontaneously emission spectrum. The phase sensitive property of the atomic system leads to quenching of the spontaneous emission in some regions of the standing-waves, which significantly reduces the uncertainty in the position measurement of the atom. We find that the frequency measurement of the emitted light localizes the atom in half-wavelength domain. Especially the probability of finding the atom at a particular position can reach 100% when a photon with certain frequency is detected. By increasing the Rabi frequencies of the driving fields, such 2D sub-half-wavelength atom localization can acquire high spatial resolution.

Figures (5)

Schematic diagrams: (a) An atom moves along the z axis and interacting with two orthogonal standing-wave fields in the x−y plane. (b) Four-level atomic system. Levels |0〉, |1〉 and |2〉 are driven by three fields Ω1, Ω2 and Ωc, and then form a closed loop. Δk=ωk−(ω1j+ω2j)/2 is the detuning of the spontaneously emitted photon with frequency ωk from the average atomic transition frequency (ω10+ω20)/2.

The spontaneous emission S(Δk;x,y) (in arbitrary unit) which directly describes the conditional position probability distribution as a function of (kx,ky)in dependence on the detuning of the spontaneously emitted photon when ϕ=0. (a) Δk=−10; (b) Δk=−9; (c) Δk=−7; (d) Δk=−6. Other parameters are the same as Fig. 2.

The spontaneous emission S(Δk;x,y) (in arbitrary unit) which directly describes the conditional position probability distribution as a function of (kx,ky) in dependence on the detuning of the spontaneously emitted photon. Parameters are Δk=−4, Ω10=3, Ω2=6, Ωc=6, and ϕ=0 (a); ϕ=π (b). Other parameters are the same as Fig. 2.